2019-20 Panini NBA Stickers

New basketball cards have been nearly impossible to find at the retail level these days as every shady character on the planet has been buying it up and flipping it for double or more. I had to settle for some stickers (and 1 card!) I found at a Target positioned near the Blu-ray movies for some reason.

304 - J.J. Barea - It's the usual Panini album sticker look here. This season appears to have some sort of filmstrip format, which is very current and relevant in today's NBA right now.

361 - LeBron James - When you have sticker albums, you're going to have shiny foil like LeBron here.

383 - Taylor Jenkins - This year's sticker album has a place for head coaches, which usually are few and far between in basketball sets.

40 - Giannis Antetokounmpo - All-Star Giannis, playing for Team Giannis. Of course!

91 - Tyler Herro - I can't imagine the current rookie card craze has extended to stickers, but you never know.

56 - Jaylen Brown (Card) - Each pack actually comes with a full sized card this year, exclusive to this set. The design is similar to the stickers.

This is what the back of the card looks like, in case you were curious.

MJ Holding Company Meijer Exclusive Hanger Pack

Greetings!

Hope everyone is doing well.  Did you all enjoy the NBA All-Star festivities this past weekend?  The 3 Point Contest rarely disappoints, and the Dunk Contest was quite fun, even though Aaron Gordon was robbed.  Count me as one of the doubters for the new All-Star Game format, but it worked...but I don't know if it worked because Kobe or if it worked because legit.

Anyway, why is Ol' Jafronius putting up a baseball repack days after the NBA All-Star Game?  All will be revealed...

When I was doing my Black Friday shopping runs, I came across these new repacks at the kinda-local Meijer.  Meijer is basically a slightly larger Super Wal-Mart.  Most have gas stations attached, and stores can be found in the midwest, mostly Michigan, with stores in Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Ohio, and Kentucky.  I skipped on them back then because I didn't know what to expect from those repacks, and dropping $5.50 for what is essentially a rack pack (they adopted the old Toys R Us rack pack pricing model) wasn't appealing.

During some down-time at the new job, I was able to find a YouTube video that showed some contents.  Definitely mixed results, but it was enough for me to go back recently to get a pack.

2019 Topps Opening Day #55 - Yusei Kikuchi (RC) (Purple Parallel)

Here's a closer look at the repack cover boy.  Most of the repacks has a purple parallel on the front, which I believe Meijer took on after Toys R Us folded (the ones that didn't have a purple parallel had a Beckett card on the front).  I wasn't able to pull Yusei from an Opening Day pack, so getting the parallel will have to do.

All the other cards in the repack are backwards, so you see the backs of all the other cards.  Here's what I got:

2016-17 Panini Donruss NBA
#53 - Rodney Hood
#18 - DeAndre Bembry (Rookie Kings)

So........yeah.

Rookie Kings is an insert set, and I don't believe I have Rodney Hood yet, but still, not expecting ballers in a baseball repack.  Moving on...

2016-17 Panini Donruss NBA
#171 - Pascal Siakam (RC) (Green & Yellow Holo Laser Parallel ?)
#26 - Chris Paul (All Stars)

2016-17 Panini Hoops NBA
#77 - Aaron Gordon

Uh......................

Well, I checked eBay and the only Siakam Green/Yellow parallel (whatever they're called) on the site is listed for $32.  The Chris Paul is another insert, and as I mentioned before, Gordon got robbed.

2007 Topps
#437 - Paul Lo Duca
#482 - Jose Contreras

Phew, back to baseball cards in a baseball repack.  These cards are 13 years old?

2007 Topps
#619 - Bud Black
#519 - Alex Rios

Sorry for the blurry picture.  The cards do look like they've been handled well, though.

2007 Topps
#304 - Kenny Rogers (Gold Glove Award)
#219 - Chris Gomez
#33 - Ervin Santana

1988 Topps UK Minis

#26 - Kirk Gibson
#86 - Mike Witt
#84 - Tim Wallach

Still recovering from the basketball card cameos, here's a threesome from the old Topps American Baseball UK set.  These cards popped up in every pack the YouTuber opened so expect some of these if you try one of these out.

2017 Topps
#655 - Garrett Richards
#660 - Jeanmar Gomez
#540 - Billy Hamilton

Back to recent sets with these cards from 2017.

2017 Topps
#447 - Scott Kazmir

2017 Topps Heritage
#339 - Alex Gordon
#78 - Pedro Baez

2016 Topps
#513 - Caleb Joseph
#506 - Stephen Vogt
#487 - Martin Prado

I'll have to see if I have that Vogt...the only card image that comes to my mind for him is the 2015 All-Star card with him holding the little girl.

2016 Topps
#611 - Darin Ruf
#491 - Rich Hill
#380 - Michael Blazek

2016 Topps
#MLBD2-37 - Joey Votto (MLB Debut)
#65-1989 - Ken Griffey Jr (Celebrating 65 Years)

We've reached the insert portion of the repack. I still can't find odds for the MLB Debut inserts.  I'm also not sure of the card number for the Griffey, but it's still a nice card to pick up.

2016 Topps
#RS-9 - Alex Rodriguez (Record Setters)
#HH-15 - Greg Maddux (Hallowed Highlights)

Again, I can't find the pack odds for the Record Setters insert, but the Hallowed Highlights were found 1 in every 8 packs. 

2016 Topps
#BB2-1969 - Johnny Bench (Berger's Best)
#429 - Kenta Maeda (RC)
#524 - Justin Nicolino (Future Stars)

The Berger's Best was a 1 in 4 pack insert.  Nice find in the Maeda RC...Justin Nicolino last pitched in the majors in 2017, so Topps was a little too quick with handing out those Future Star designations.

Anyway, that's the repack.  If you watched the YouTube video, you can see that this product is a real hit or miss.  For me, I got the repack for the Kikuchi and the inserts I pulled were alright.  Was it worth $5?  It would be real odd if the difference maker for a baseball repack is a NBA rookie card parallel.

Thanks for reading!

2019 SGA Cello Pack

I went to the Baltimore Orioles Caravan Event yesterday and they were handing out Cello packs of 2019 Topps Series 1 each pack contains 4 cards and a header card with info on National Baseball card day. I opened 7 packs and received all base cards so not sure if these had any inserts, autos or parallels included.  Below is the first pack I opened included 2 RC McNeil & Adams and a Future HOFer so not a bad pack.

1999 SkyBox Thunder

Here's another blast from the past. It looks like that 2020 Topps post is going to have to wait.

We start things off with a couple of weird things. First, here's this contest entry form.

And here's one of those thin, frequently discarded checklist cards. These are often unnumbered.

252 - Rafael Palmeiro - We finally dig into the meat of the pack with the meaty Palmeiro. Well, that's probably not all he was made of.

165 - Scott Elarton - I can honestly say that these fonts set my skin on fire. You also get a glimpse of the nearly as hideous '90s Astros logo here.

161 - David Justice - Another big name of the '90s.

183 - Brian Jordan RANT - The pack odds mention a 1:2 chance of pulling a "RANT" parallel, which is exactly what we got here. The foil is a different color, and on the back it's actually stamped RANT... with no other clear explanation. This one heads to my collection, since it depicts a Cardinal even though he's off to another club.

20 - Edgardo Alfonzo - Alfonzo wears lucky 13, my favorite number. This is something I didn't know until just now.

104 - Craig Biggio - Here's a HOFer apparently practicing pop-ups in SkyBox Studios or something.

38 - Neifi Perez - This actually isn't a tiny set, like some of the stuff Fleer used to put out, so it's surprising that I actually know all of the guys in the pack.

25 - Chuck Knoblauch - It's hard for me to think of this guy without recalling Chris Berman calling him "New Kids on the Knoblauch!" for more than a decade, just beating and beating and beating it to death in that way of his.

2001 Topps Archives Football

I took a quick look and didn't see any posts queued up for football's biggest day. Fortunately, I have a stash of packs I have to post here when I have some time, and one happened to be an NFL themed pack with not a lot of cards. This is going to be presented largely without comment, mostly due to time constraints as well as the fact that I really didn't start following football until around the time Tecmo Super Bowl came out.

36 - Arthur Donovan

376 - Steve Grogan - Here's a young Steve Grogan, who I remember from the losing side of that game against the Super Bowl Shuffle Bears. I think it was Grogan, anyway?

133 - Fred Biletnikoff

8 - Gino Marchetti - If you hadn't guessed by now, this Archives set seems similar to what Topps has done with baseball sets, featuring cards of former players in their past designs. In baseball now, of course, they have to use mostly current players due to their contract with MLB.

56 - Rosey Grier

85 - Charley Conerly

418 - Steve Grogan - Double Grogan action! This is a much more familiar design to me, as football cards were cheap and plentiful in the early '90s.

12 - Jim Kelly - This is a terrific card design (from 1997) that apparently never made it way over to the baseball side.

Enjoy the game, and all that other stuff that comes along with it!

2018 Panini Prizm Football

Greetings!

Hope everyone is doing well and ready to watch the big game tomorrow.  On paper, it should be one of the more even matches in recent games...but that's why the play the game, right?  I'll be working but should be able to sneak in the game during my shift...unless that coronavirus decides to act up even more that night.

The Wal-Mart card guy must have recently reloaded the clearance boxes recently, because among all the common football card packs (Donruss and Score) was a 3 pack of Panini Prizm with one of those 3 card Red, White, and Blue packs inserted in the package. 

I'll get around to posting that RW&B pack, but here's the best of the 3 Prizm packs:

#83 - Ryan Tannehill

One thing I've noticed while getting the occasional Panini football pack (and most Panini baseketball packs) is all the isolation on the player.  It seems as if every player, even the defensive ones, is all by his lonesome.  Makes me wonder what a Stadium Club Panini-style would look like. 

#40 - Jay Ajayi

So, there's the shot of some players way in the distance to show that Jay's actually playing in a game.  Still, I'd like to see a Panini card of a player trying to evade a tackle or about to get hit...chromy goodness is even better if there's more than one person on the card.

#H14 - Odell Beckham Jr (Hype)

Nice colorful Hype insert of OBJ.  Panin doesn't give the odds; Cardboard Connection says all the inserts are 1 in 3 packs.  Here's the checklist for those who are expecting it.

#188 - Matt Ryan

I had Matty Ice and Phillip Rivers on one of my fantasy teams.  I had the worst time choosing the starter...when I started Ryan, Rivers had the great game, and vice versa.

Here are the backs:

Pretty standard Panin backs...duh.

Anyway, that's the pack.  On a non-football note, kuddos to the Lakers for their Kobe Bryant tribute last night, as well as the other tributes teams and players performed in the days after helicopter crash.  Life is fragile folks.  RIP Kobe...thanks for the memories.

Enjoy the game tomorrow, and thanks for reading!